


Upon a Hill

by Swindlefingers



Category: The Outer Worlds (Video Game)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Crisis of Faith, Fictional Religion & Theology, Fist Fight, Gen, OSI, Order of Scientific Inquiry, Religious Conflict, When a boy you think is cute starts questioning your faith, cassocks, its time to meet him in the pit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-12
Updated: 2020-01-12
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:33:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22231120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Swindlefingers/pseuds/Swindlefingers
Summary: Maximillian Desoto's first sermon doesn't go very well, but the walk back to the ship to take he and his seminarian classmate back home is even worse.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 15
Collections: The City and the Stars 2019





	Upon a Hill

**Author's Note:**

  * For [KanuKoris](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KanuKoris/gifts).



The road between the mill and the laborer’s offsite settlement was well guarded but not well paved. Purple dust from the road coated Maximillian Desoto’s shoes. He tugged at the collar of his blue seminarian cassock. Sweat dripped down the small of his back under the glaring afternoon suns. The Halcyon-patented acrylic fibers were meant to stay shiny and smelling clean but didn’t help in this planet’s heat. He was thankful the walk up to the settlement that morning was cooler and he wasn’t performing his first attended sermon with sweat stains under his arms.

Now, on the walk back to the mill and their transport off-world, back to their advanced seminary studies at OSI’s theological college, the sun was merciless. The heat was such that he found it hard to breathe. It made his fingers itch with the idea of ripping the Lawdamned cassock off of himself. He swore under his breath every time he wiped his brow of sweat.

The fellow student lumbering along side him smiled blissfully at absolutely nothing. Infuriatingly. Not a Law-damned thing.

Hubert Wallace. Called “The Wall” behind his back, sometimes even to his front. The hulk of a young man took the name with a warm chuckle when he heard it. How the size of him survived on the rations given to the seminary students was a wonder. Some joked that he ate the students who never returned for the next year of class. It was easier to joke than to accept that those students simply didn’t pass their end-of-year personality exams, had started showing signs of labor-sympathy, or, most shockingly, had attempted to look into the forbidden texts of the Philosophists.

Max’s mind tried to distract itself by picking back over his sermon.

His well-planned sermon, researched for weeks, written and rewritten in an effort to pull the members of this sleepy mill-side parish out of their doldrums and dipping production output, had lulled even the most wide-eyed parishioner into a catatonic state. Max brought them just a taste of the answers he’d wanted for himself and they refused him. Outright. The grace of the golden spiral never roused them. The power of Pythagorean theorem bored them. The ecstasy of Euler’s equation passed them unnoticed.

Then? Then Hubert took to the pulpit, his broad smile and broad hands clutching the lectern. His voice was honeyed, hopeful, helping these mill workers find solace in their missing fingers. He bolstered their flagging morale with the hope of drawing more near the Architect's Plan to find the joy they needed, just like Hubert had. He urged them to lay down their burdens at the base of the Plan and pick up their hammer, wrenches, pen, or needle, and find the solace they needed in their work.

Max kicked at a rock in their path. And then another.

“Something wrong, Brother Desoto?”

With all of Max’s higher faculties melted by the heat of the midday suns, and blinded by Hubert’s equally warm, beautiful countenance, he let his guard fall.

“I worry my sermon did not do much good to those parishioners,” Max admitted.

“Every parishioner needs to hear what they need to hear. Maybe yours was not what they needed today,” Hubert shrugged.

“Truly. Though I worry no one will be asking the same questions as I, Brother Wallace. Or wanting the same answers.”

“Why worry so, Brother Desoto? Why fret? The Plan has our best interests, and Halcyon’s, at heart.”

“Do you ever wonder, though, Brother Wallace—”

“No, not really,” the brute interrupted.

“What?”

“Do I ever wonder? That’s what you asked. I don’t. I don’t need to.” Hubert lifted up his arms and spun around as they continued their walk, motioning to the multicolored fungal splendor all around them on the road. 

Max rolled his eyes.

“There are no questions to ask,” Hubert continued.

The phrase made him flinch. Jealousy began to trickle loose inside of his guts. It turned to steam as it met the anger he already carried inside of him from the suns beating down on his back and the failure of his sermon earlier. The steam of it hissed in mercilessly inside his head.

“To ask is to doubt, and I do not doubt. To doubt is to not have faith,” Hubert shook his head from side to side, a pronounced frown on his face. 

“I have faith. Do you, Brother Desoto?”

Bitter jealousy erupted into a geyser within Max Desoto. That faith should come so easily, so readily to this lumbering ox? His hands dropped from his cassock’s collar and into hard fists.

Max called Hubert’s name and swung his right fist as hard as he could, as the dullard turned to answer. All the buzzing in Max’s head fell into silence as he felt Hubert’s jaw crunch against his knuckles. Hubert’s head snapped to the left with the force of the blow.

Brother Desoto sent his other fist crashing into Brother Wallace's eye socket, the fragile part of the face. Blind the bastard. The yawning maw of doubt in Max’s belly clamped itself shut. Blissfully, mercifully, the dread that was his daily companion left him alone when his fists started flying. 

Max aimed lower, driving his right fist into Hubert’s middle. It sent the oaf to his knees with a wheeze. The restlessness in Max’s legs, the jitters under his skin always begging him to run, locked him into proper form to throw a few more solid punches.

A grunt crawled its way out of Hubert’s throat as he lurched forward, wrapping his arms around Max’s legs and squeezed. This pulled Max off balance. Hubert pushed forward, sending Max to the ground. Hubert scrambled up, pinning Max beneath him.

Max threw his fists into Hubert’s shoulders and head, desperately trying to get away from his fellow student’s overpowering bulk, back to arm’s length where Max’s speed could be his advantage again.

Hubert picked Max up by his shirt, slamming him back down into the dirt. Puffs of purple pollen hung in the air around them. “Enough!” he bellowed as Max’s busted hands tried to scratch at Hubert’s face.

“Fuck you!” Max roared back, punching Hubert in the side, aiming for his kidneys.

Hubert winced and grunted, taking the pummeling with aplomb. He pinned down Max’s arms, as his fellow student squirmed. Squirmed until he ran out of steam.

“Feel better?” Hubert said through gasps of air.

Max said nothing. He turned his head to spit out a mouthful of blood. After a few moments of hard breathing, Hubert rolled away to lay in the dirt of the road.

In the quiet of their new peace treaty, Max listened to his breath in his throat. Hubert sat up next to him, pulling Max by the collar to sit upright soon after. Max wrenched himself away with a snarl. 

Hubert wiped his mouth along his cassock’s sleeve, a smear of fresh blood darkened the blue fabric. Max looked away in shame.

“Have you really never…” Max trailed off, trying to find the words he needed.

“Hm?”

“Never wondered?” Max’s asked quietly. Hoping beyond hope to hear, finally, that he wasn’t alone in this.

“No. Like I said, Brother. I don’t need to.”

Max sighed, his ribs instantly punishing him for the attempt. He winced, holding his side.

“Do you?” Hubert asked.

Max sagged into himself. He knew what he wanted to say would invite an investigation from the Bishop at his quarterly assessment, affect his final year of study, and possibly remove him from the only chance he had to study The Plan to find his place within it.

_I wonder and I doubt. I don’t feel what you feel but I want to… so badly. I ache with it. Where is my salvation? Where is my peace? My solace, Brother Wallace?_

“No.” Max lied, shaking his head.

“Good. To question the Plan is to fall away from it,” Hubert looked out onto the mill below them, “and to fall away from the Plan set for us is to invite hardship.”

Max looked up, his hands throbbing, knuckles busted and bleeding. Hubert’s still smiling, but scuffed face watching him.

“Do you want to make your life harder?” He asked.

“No.”

Hubert stood, brushing the back of his pants off before holding out a hand to Max.

“Question less and believe more, Brother. Have faith.”

Max repeated the phrase back to Hubert with a resigned nod, before beginning their silent walk back to the mill and their transport home.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know math but I googled the names some famous math equations!


End file.
